Augustine was born in AD 354 in Thagaste, a small town in Roman North Africa, to a pagan father, Patricius, and a devout Christian mother, Monica, who continually prayed for her husband’s and son’s conversions. Her husband converted to Christianity and was baptized shortly before his death in the early 370s. Monica’s prayers for her son would continue much longer.
As a young man, Augustine left for Carthage to study rhetoric and spent the better part of a decade with the Manichaeans, a sect that posited an eternal dualistic opposition between good and evil. Disappointed with the Manichaeans as well as the students he had begun to teach in Carthage, Augustine moved to Rome and then to Milan to teach rhetoric. While in Milan, he began to attend Bishop Ambrose’s church and to read the Scriptures once again. It was in 386, as Augustine sat in a garden in Milan, that he heard a child chanting the words tolle lege (take up and read). Augustine did as he was told, turning to Romans 13:13-14 and reading, “Not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy. But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires” (ESV). Augustine promptly abandoned his resistance to the Christian faith and was baptized the following year by Bishop Ambrose.
In 391, Augustine traveled to Hippo, hoping to establish a monastic community there. When he attended the church in Hippo, however, he was compelled by the congregation to join the church and its aged bishop, Valerius, as a priest. In 396, Augustine became Bishop of Hippo, where he would remain until his death. During his time serving the church in Hippo, Augustine did battle with three major opponents. Against the Manichaeans, his erstwhile tribe, he argued that God created all things good and that evil is a corruption of this good creation. Against the Donatists, who desired complete purity in the visible church, Augustine asserted that the church in this age will always be a mixed body of believers and non-believers. Against Pelagius, scandalized by Augustine’s prayer, “Give what Thou commandest, and command what Thou wilt” (Confessions 10.29.40), Augustine declared that salvation, from beginning to end, is a gift of God’s free grace. Augustine died in 430, having served the church in Hippo for nearly four decades. While there, he preached likely thousands of sermons and wrote some of the most important books in the history of the church and of Western civilization more broadly, such as Confessions and The City of God.
No theologian in church history has had a more profound impact on Western Christianity than Augustine. He was regarded by the medieval church as its foremost doctor, and many of the Reformation debates over sin, grace, and justification centered on his writings. The gospel that Augustine preached to his congregation in Hippo and with which he opposed Pelagius, that salvation is a free gift of God’s grace in Christ, is the same gospel that all people still so desperately need to hear today. His fundamental insight about human nature, too, remains as true as ever. Indeed, the human heart is restless until it finds its rest in God.
From Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, vols. 1, 2, 6
“Thou hast formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee.”
—Confessions 1.1.1
“Accordingly, two cities have been formed by two loves: the earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self. The former, in a word, glories in itself, the latter in the Lord.”
—The City of God 14.28
“If thou art not able to understand, believe, that thou mayest understand. Faith goes before; understanding follows after.”
—Sermon 118.1 (NPNF Sermon 68)
“Rightly is God called the highest good, because He is above whom nothing is better.”
—The City of God 8.8.
“Whoever, therefore, thinks that he has understood the divine Scriptures or any part of them, but cannot by his understanding build up this twofold love of God and our neighbor, has not yet succeeded in understanding them.”
—On Christian Doctrine 1.40.
Confessions (c. 397–400) The City of God (c. 413–426) On the Trinity (c. 400–420) On Christian Doctrine (c. 397; completed 426) On the Spirit and the Letter (c. 412) Enchiridion (c. 421)
At Westminster Seminary California, study Augustine and other scholars who have shaped the church by laying a rich theological foundation that continues to equip pastors and church leaders for faithful ministry.
